by Jan Burke
“Bingle?” he said.
The dog wobbled up on all fours, then lurched forward. He fell flat, but got up again, standing unsteadily, looking woozy. He whined softly.
“Hey,” Jack said, “looks like somebody’s busted into your garage again.”
Ben ignored him. We ran to the dog run. Ben opened it and hurried inside.
“Oh God, Bingle!” Ben said, running his hands over the dog as Bingle collapsed in a heap. “Are you okay? Are you okay, Bingle? Shit! How do I say that in Spanish?”
By then, both Jack and I had crowded into the enclosure with him. I figured Bingle’s understanding of Spanish was great for any number of dog commands but probably didn’t extend to conversation. All the same, I understood Ben’s panic, and told him, “¿Estás bien, Bingle?”
He asked it, and when the dog just lay there, Ben looked anxiously at me.
I glanced around and saw Bingle’s dish, which had a little food in it — the food was still moist. I picked up the dish. “Don’t you usually take this away after he’s eaten?”
“Oh Jesus — I didn’t put that in here! I haven’t fed him yet this afternoon. I — I think someone has poisoned him.”
“Let’s get him to the vet,” I said. “We should bring the food with us, too.”
I drove as fast as I dared. Ben sat in the back with Bingle, talking to him, petting him. When we arrived, Bingle was hurried into an examination room.
Jack used his phone to call Frank and tell him what had happened, and mentioned the break-in. “No, we didn’t even have time to look around inside the house.” He looked over at me, then said, “That’s probably a good idea.”
When he hung up, he said, “Frank’s going to try to get a unit over there right away, just to make sure no one else goes in or out, but they’ll wait until Ben gets there. He’s going to go home and make sure Deke and Dunk are okay — just in case . . .”
“Just in case this is Parrish’s doing. Of course it is.” I got up and paced. “Still, I think Parrish has a personal dislike of Bingle. He threatened to shoot Bingle when we were up in the mountains.”
Ben was in with Bingle and the vet for a long time; Frank came by while we were waiting.
“Deke and Dunk are okay,” he said. “I’ve put them inside with Cody and warned the surveillance team about what happened at Ben’s place.”
Ben came out, walking like a zombie. He sat down next to me, said hello to Frank, then told us that the vet had emptied Bingle’s stomach. “They said that he didn’t seem to have eaten much. But . . .” He lowered his head into his hands. “It all depends on what it was that they fed him.”
“Is there any way to find out?” I asked.
“Probably not in time. He checked the food, it looked as if there was some sort of powder in it; mostly it was blended into the food, but sort of haphazardly. It wasn’t anything caustic, but that’s all we know right now. They want to keep him here — keep him under observation.”
Frank said, “Mind if I talk to the vet?”
“Not at all. I need to get back to the house, to see if they left any sign of the poison . . .”
“A unit’s there waiting for you,” Frank said. “Just show them some ID.”
“A unit?”
Jack’s mention of the break-in had apparently never registered with him. We told him about the broken garage door.
“If you don’t mind waiting for me,” Frank said, “I’d like to be there when you walk through. I’ll only be a minute.”
He came out carrying a bag which held the dog food bowl.
There was a crime scene unit on hand — they greeted me by name — and much more investigative power than most citizens would get for a burglary call, but this break-in had merited special attention. Nick Parrish or his accomplice might have paid this visit. The police were giving the place a thorough inspection, looking for trace evidence, hoping to find something that might help them identify that accomplice or lead them to Parrish. Ben, who had numbly walked past the destruction in his living room, underwent a change when he discovered the empty plastic medicine container on the kitchen counter.
“Codeine!” he shouted, just barely restraining himself from touching it before Frank needed to warn him. “Codeine! I have to call the vet!” He started to reach for the phone, thought better of it, and momentarily looked lost.
Jack pulled out his cell phone, pushed a button to recall the most recently dialed numbers, found the one he wanted, and handed the phone to Ben.
Ben told the vet what he had learned, then looked at the bottle without touching it. He read off the dosage level, then said, “I just had it refilled over the weekend. It was for thirty capsules. I hadn’t taken any of them yet. They’re all gone.” He looked over at the dog food can on the counter. “I think just about half of one can . . . almost thirteen ounces. Three hundred and sixty-one grams. It looks as if he didn’t eat much of it. At that level . . . yes, I understand. Yes, a big dog, but not an adult’s body weight.” He listened for a while, then said, “Yes, I’d appreciate that.” He wrote down a number.
He hung up and said, “All thirty at once is a heavy dosage — enough to kill him.” His voice caught, but he went on. “They can’t tell how much Bingle ingested, because it wasn’t distributed evenly through the food. But he thinks that it probably wasn’t so much, because Bingle seems to be doing better.”
Later, Frank asked him, “What’s on these videotapes — the two that really got smashed?”
“They’re training tapes. When the Las Piernas Search and Rescue group gets together — including the cadaver dog team — we tape our sessions.”
“So these are tapes of Bingle?”
“Bingle and the other dogs and their handlers. David is in most of these. I’ve been watching him and Bingle. I’ve only been to one session so far. The other handlers tell me that it’s a two-way learning process, that Bingle is already trying to work with me, trying to read me as much as I’m trying to read him.”
“These are the original tapes?”
“Yes, although David made copies for the other members of the group.”
“Do you have a roster for this SAR group?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I think we’re going to want to see who was on these tapes.”
“I can tell you that,” he said. “I’ve watched them a lot.”
Frank looked around at the mess. “Why don’t you stay at our place tonight? Closer to the vet.”
“I work tonight,” I said, “but don’t have to be anywhere tomorrow until the afternoon. I can help you clean up during the day.”
“We’ll get your back door boarded shut,” Frank said, “and we’ll be watching this place, too, from now on.”
“Okay, okay.” He laughed. “I’m sold. To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to staying here without Bingle tonight.”
Ben gathered a change of clothes and put them in the back of his car. He was going to follow us back to the house. He started to get into his Jeep, then hurried over to the van. “Wait a minute,” he said. “There are some tapes that didn’t get smashed — the ones from your house — they should still be in the back of the van.”
“Irene, I can see what we’ll be doing before you go in tonight,” Jack said, eyeing the twenty or so tapes in the box. “Want me to make popcorn?”
53
MONDAY NIGHT, SEPTEMBER 25
Las Piernas
He was enraged. He didn’t reveal it.
“Poor Moth,” he said into the telephone, “you should have come to me in the first place, of course.”
He was glad of the long cord on the telephone in the garage. It allowed him to pace as he listened to one lame excuse after another. Really, this was too much!
He halted in front of the freezer, ran his fingers over the lid. It calmed him.
“Yes, my dear Moth, but I already knew about that first visit to David Niles’s home . . . you didn’t doubt that did you?”
In
truth, Nick had known nothing of the sort, but it wouldn’t hurt the Moth to believe a little more strongly in his omniscience. He had been wounded and escaping to that rathole in Oregon when the break-in occurred. He should have wondered how the Moth had learned certain things about Sheridan.
“I have to hang up now,” he said into the phone. “You and I must meet later. Left on your own, this would have been a hopeless mess. Luckily for you, I’m here to take care of you, my Moth. Wait for my call — and I mean that, little Moth. You must simply wait. You wouldn’t want to displease me — would you?”
He listened with satisfaction to the Moth’s pleading tone. “I thought not.” He hung up.
He put the phone back in the cradle and returned to the freezer. He unlocked it and lifted the lid, enjoyed the rush of cold air that drifted up to his face.
He looked down at the frozen, nude corpse and said, “I know it’s rather difficult to answer questions under the circumstances, my dear, but would you care to dance?”
He smiled.
“I knew I should have left your head on, just in case questions like these might arise. I have others, mostly about you-know-who. But you know, I think I have the answers to those questions anyway. You’re something of a cold fish.”
He slammed the lid closed and laughed uproariously.
It took him a few moments to regain his composure.
When he did, he put his gloves on and opened the freezer once more. He stared down at her a moment, then with one gloved finger, traced the outline of a birthmark on her inner thigh.
“You were his whore, of course, so he must have seen this. Did he love it, or did he hate it? Was it one of your imperfections or one of your charms?”
The plastic beneath the body crinkled as he lifted her. For a moment, he hugged her to himself, saying, “I’m so sorry we didn’t have more time together, darling. But you can’t blame a boy like me for trying to get a head!”
He admonished himself once his levity was back under control — if he didn’t stop being so witty, the poor little darling would thaw before they found her.
He waltzed toward the car, clutching her to him.
His mind slipped a little then, and he thought of Irene Kelly, and his rage returned. “We’ll show them, won’t we, sweetheart?” he said to his dancing partner, and tenderly placed her in the trunk of the car.
54
MONDAY NIGHT, SEPTEMBER 25
Las Piernas
We soon realized that watching tapes of Bingle and David was not such a great idea. After two minutes of the first tape, Ben turned it off and called the vet’s office; Bingle was asleep, his heartbeat was normal.
Good news, but Ben looked miserable. He blamed himself, and wondered if he should have kept Bool, so that Bingle would not have been left alone. “Why won’t Parrish just come after me?” he asked. “Leave the dog out of it.”
Later, he said, “Bingle’s not used to being caged at night. What if he wakes up and thinks I’m giving him away?”
Frank called to say that Houghton had been living near Dallas, in Irving, Texas. “Doesn’t look like he’s left the Dallas area in months, but we’re still checking that out.”
That night, Jack came with me to work, an arrangement John approved, sort of. “If it will keep me from having a uniformed cop inside the newsroom, fine,” he said. “Just don’t tell Wrigley. As it is, seeing all the police surveillance of the building, he’s nervous as a turkey in late November. Called the chief of police this afternoon to complain about it.”
“He’d rather have Nick Parrish in his newsroom?”
“I don’t think he, uh, exactly believes the suggestion that Parrish is hanging out around here. Maybe he doesn’t want to believe it.”
I took Jack up to Café Kelly that night. When Stinger, Travis, and Leonard learned what had happened to Bingle, I thought Stinger just might go on a house-to-house hunt for Nick Parrish, with Leonard and Travis riding posse.
I asked him about Aunt Mary, and his mood changed immediately. “If I was twenty years younger, I’d ask her to marry me,” he said with a grin.
When I got home, I discovered Cody had stretched himself out on Frank’s chest, but the dogs were nowhere in sight. “They’re in with Ben,” Frank said sleepily.
I don’t know if a dream awakened me, or if I heard Ben go outside. Either way, at about four in the morning, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep. I dressed and went out to the patio, where Ben was sitting, already dressed and drinking coffee, petting Deke and Dunk.
“I called the vet,” he said. “They say Bingle got up and he’s barking. They think he’s going to be fine.”
“Great news,” I said. “If he’s barking, he must be getting better.”
“Yes. I told them how to say ‘be quiet’ in Spanish. They said I could pick him up at eight.”
“So here you are with a mere four hours to wait.”
He smiled. “Right. At first I was too worried to sleep. Now, I’m too relieved. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“No. You know I’m one of Bingle’s biggest fans. And if anything happened to one of these guys, or Cody, I’d be a basket case. What’s your schedule tomorrow? Can you catch up on sleep?”
“I’ll be okay as far as sleep goes. I did sleep a little tonight — as much as I need. I’m supposed to be your . . .”
“Bodyguard?”
“How about — companion? What’s your schedule?”
“I have an appointment with Jo Robinson in the afternoon. Then I’m working from ten at night until two in the morning, but I think Frank is planning to relieve you from duty before then.”
We sat in silence for a time. I thought about my assignments from Jo. I hadn’t done too badly, but there was this Parzival business.
“Ben?”
“Hmm?”
“Before Parrish escaped—”
“Before the others were killed,” he insisted, always annoyed at my attempt to avoid saying it.
“Before the others were killed,” I conceded, “even before we found Julia Sayre, something was bothering you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Ben — to quote good old Parzival — ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ”
He looked away from me.
“I have a feeling it has something to do with reporters.”
He didn’t answer.
“Or was it an instant dislike of me, personally?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what troubled you? What made you so angry? Why couldn’t you sleep at night?”
“Many things,” he answered softly.
I waited. He tried to fob me off with a list of the mass disaster cases he had worked recently.
“David told me about them,” I said. “And while I’m not saying that I’d have the fortitude to work one of those cases, let alone as many as you have, David hinted there was something else going on with you.”
“He did?” he said. “I’m surprised. David was usually better at keeping confidences.”
“Don’t try to make this about David. Unless you had some particularly awful experience with a reporter on one of those disaster cases, I don’t think that’s what made you snap at me from the moment I joined the team.”
He hesitated, then said, “I’m tempted to make something up. It would be easier than telling you the truth.” He sighed. “But after all you’ve done for me, the least I can do is be honest.”
“You don’t owe me anything. Tell me because we’re friends, or don’t tell me at all.”
He looked out at the garden. In a low voice, he said, “It has a rather sordid beginning, I’m afraid. The end of a relationship. You remember Camille?”
“Yes — the blond bombshell who visited you at the hospital.”
He nodded. “Camille is bright and funny, loves the outdoors, and yes, when we dated, I knew that every guy who saw her on my arm was green with envy.”
“So what went wrong?”
> “Me, I guess. She finally realized that I wasn’t going to change in the ways she hoped I would.”
“What was she hoping would change?”
“My work, mostly. She didn’t mind dating an anthropologist, but she hated everything about the forensic work — the demands on my time, the thought of what I was doing, the smell of my clothes when I came home. She kept hoping that I’d weary of it, and take a position with a museum. I finally made it clear to her that I’d never leave forensic work, that it was important to me. She asked me if it was more important than she was, and I’m afraid I answered with my usual lack of tact.”
“So you ended up moving out.”
“Yes. I missed her a lot at first, but on the whole, I knew we were better off apart. I enjoyed living with David and Bingle and Bool. And I needed David’s support not long after that.”
He was silent for so long, I began to think he had changed his mind about talking to me. Eventually, though, he went on.
“A few weeks after I had moved out, Camille asked me to meet her for lunch. She said she had some things to give me, things I had left behind at the house — a few CDs and an old alarm clock. So we met and she gave them to me. She told me that she was seeing someone new. That hurt — my pride mostly, I suppose — but I lied and told her I was happy for her.
“Then she asked me what I was working on. I had no business telling her anything, but I was working on a case that had received a lot of attention. Five years ago, two young high school students had gone hiking in the desert and had disappeared. One partial set of remains was found, and it looked as if it might be one of the boys. I had been asked to work on it. I did, and I was close to making an identification.
“I was telling her what made the identification difficult — the passage of time, exposure to weather, animals damaging the bones, and so on. I said that I was going back to where the bones had been found and taking a team with me to see if we could recover more remains.”
He shook his head. “Then she asked, ‘Which boy do you think it is?’ And — and I don’t know why, but I guessed. I told her more than once that I wasn’t at all sure. It doesn’t matter. It was something that I never, ever should have done.”